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Arimaa

Alignment and Abstract Strategy Games

Arimaa is a two-player abstract strategy board game designed to be playable with a standard chess set while staying difficult for computers and easy for people to learn. It was invented between 1997 and 2002 by Omar Syed, an Indian-American computer engineer trained in artificial intelligence, who was inspired by Garry Kasparov's defeat by the chess computer Deep Blue. The name is Aamir, the name of his young son, spelled backwards with an initial a. Syed published the rules in 2002 and patented them in 2003, and the patent expired in 2023. He also set up the Arimaa Challenge, with a yearly prize of USD 10,000 until 2020 for a program that could beat a strong human, which a computer called Sharp, by David Wu, finally won in 2015. The game has won several awards, a body of theory and a few books, and an internet community with tournaments.

Facts
Sport
Game Type (category)
Board Game 1
Game Type (category)
Strategy Game 1
Classification
Player Count
Two-Player 1
Origin Year
2002 1
Connections

Long-Form Articles

Sources
1. Arimaa (source article)
  • Lead sentence
    is a two-player strategy board game
  • Lead, second paragraph
    In 2002, Omar Syed published the rules of Arimaa
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